Page 85 of No More Secrets

She shoots him an incredulous glare. “For you, of course.”

“Me?”

“Is it so hard to believe we care about you?”

For him, yes. He gives her a blank look, waiting for her to elaborate.

“I needed to see for myself that you’re okay. Lee got me ten minutes with you. I’ve been worried sick about you.” She lets go of her hair, and he notices her hands are shaking. His chest concaves, feeling hollow.

“I’m sorry for running out on you,” he says, bothered he’s the cause of her upset. “I left you to handle Dad’s death on your own.”

“Yeah, that was a real shit thing to do. Why did you?”

He glances over his shoulder at the door before leaning over the table and lowering his voice. “I don’t understand it, Liv. I swear there should be a warrant for my arrest for Dad, that I’d been caught on traffic cams. It was me. I—”

Olivia claps a hand over his mouth. “Shush. Stop right there,” she orders in a harsh whisper. Her gaze darts to the camera then back to him. “I don’t want to hear it.”

He nods gently, and she releases her hand. Keeping her head close to his, she says, “I suspected that was why you took off. You were acting weird that night. I knew something was up, especially when you wouldn’t tell me what happened to him. I read the accident and autopsy reports. It wasn’t you, Luc. It was all Dad. He was drunk. His alcohol level was way above the limit, and he was speeding.”

“Because I was chasing him.”

“He got in his car and chose to drive.”

“But I strangled him with the seat belt,” he says under his breath through gritted teeth.

“How? You didn’t even get out of your truck.”

He lurches upward. “Yeah, I did.” That, he specifically remembers. He’d been sitting in his truck on the side of the road with blood on his hand. Then he got out of the truck and saw his father’s demolished car in the ravine. As to whether he went down to look, that’s where his memories get cloudy.

“I mean you did, but you didn’t go down to Dad’s car. The police report says you got out, looked around, then got back in and drove off. The only blood on the scene was Dad’s.”

A glimmer of hope flares, but he quickly douses it.

“Then why isn’t that the way I remember it?” It doesn’t make sense to him.

She shrugs. “I don’t know. Were you high?”

He shakes his head. “Just my anxiety pills.”

“You’re still on clonazepam?”

He nods. “Was.”

“Maybe you were hallucinating. My therapist has me on the same meds. I read that’s one of the side effects. Rare, but possible. You were pretty stressed out.”

And he is prone to blackouts.

He stares at her. The answer couldn’t be that simple. Nothing in his life has been that easy. “I wasn’t hallu—”

“I don’t know what happened to you, or what you saw, only that you didn’t do it. Now, shut up about it. What I don’t get is why you think you did it in the first place. Dad was an asshole, I understand that now. But did you want to kill him?” Her eyes are bright with her pain. She’d been close to their father their entire life. Olivia took it hard when she learned their father murdered Lily’s biological father.

“Mom asked me to.”

Her mouth falls open. “She what?”

He scratches his palm with his jaw stubble. The cuffs rattle. “Not directly. She was afraid of Dad. She thought he was going to kill her,that’s the impression she gave me. She insinuated she wanted me to take care of him.”

A gasp of disgust. “That woman was manipulating you. She used you like she always has with us.”